[Tutor] Syntax for list comps

[Danny Yoo]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Johan Martinez <jmartiee at gmail.com> wrote:
> Where can I find syntax for list comps? I am confused how/whether they are
> evaluated left-right or right-left. Consider following list flattening
> example:
>
> mx = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]
>
> [value for row in mx for value in row]


I read this as the following parts:

###################
mx = [
 value                 # line 1
 for row in mx      # line 2
 for value in row   # line 3
]
###################

where I'm seeing three parts.  Internally, I'm thinking that this is
going to work like the following code:

################################
mx = []

for row in mx:                # from line 2
    for value in row:         # from line 3
        mx.append(value)  # from line 1
################################

where we represent the implicit "nesting" in the double loops in the
list comprehension as actual nesting here, and pieces get rearranged
from the list comprehension syntax into the above.



> That's a bit confusing syntax for me. Sorry if I am not clear in explaining
> it.

It is admittedly odd.  I believe the syntax used for list
comprehensions is adopted from a kind of mathematical syntax that
mathematicians use for expressing sets of values.

For example, if we were to express the set of odd numbers as a
mathematician, we might say:

                                        { 2x + 1  |  x ∈ N }

where N is extra fancy-looking, the '∈' is the math symbol for "in",
and the bar "|" is there just to distinguish the left side from the
right side.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-builder_notation#Formal_set_builder_notation_sets

Now that you've seen what a mathematician writes to represent a set,
we can look back at Python list comprehensions: they bear a
resemblance to set builder notation.  We don't have fancy symbols
ready on our keyboards, so we use for loop keywords to compensate.  I
think that's the inspiration.


That being said, as soon as there are *two* loops nested in there, I
think list comprehensions are hard to read too.  When they get nested
like that, I prefer to express them as the code with explicit list
construction and calls to append().


Hope that makes sense!